Still More Metaphors - Page 10

In 1995, the CD-ROM company Voyager used a tree metaphor to structure its navigation interface. Although somewhat cute and possibly acceptable given its artistic ambitions and "green" leanings, this is neither an informative way of utilizing the available screen space nor a helpful structure for the information. Why are certain things on the same branch? You are left to guess.

Just imagine the potential for metaphor run amok on The Monster Board: the Monster's Lair (secrets of job search), Left-Over Bones (jobs that have been on the system some time), Haunted House (employers in trouble), and Loch Ness Monster (overseas jobs). Given the name, the site exercises remarkable restraint and limits itself to a funny drawing that gives the site some personality. One can always argue whether a name like "Monster" works for a site that's not about monsters, but it definitely is memorable and makes the site stand out in a crowded field of names such as CareerPath, CareerWeb, Career Central, Career Connector, Career Exposure, Career Avenue, CareerMart, CareerSite, CareerExposure, CareerExchange, CareerCity, Career Shop, and so on.

Shopping Carts as Interface Standard

Shopping carts are now so common on e-commerce sites that they have morphed from metaphor to interface standard. When users encounter a web shopping cart these days, they don't think of a physical supermarket as the reference system. Instead, they think of all the other websites where they have seen shopping carts. Once something becomes sufficiently widely used, it becomes an interface convention and people simply know what to expect.

The standardization of shopping carts is good and bad. The benefits come from consistency, which is even stronger than metaphor as a learning tool. In fact, the user doesn't have to learn anything as long as an interface element behaves exactly like the user is accustomed to. At the same time, shopping carts are an inappropriate interface for many applications, and yet designs are forced to use a shopping cart because that is what users expect.

More Metaphors - Page 9
Designing Web Usability
Navigation - Page 11